The Cost of Writing Vulnerably – A Guest Post by Grace Biskie

“Why do you write so vulnerably then?” he asks with genuine sincerity, genuine confusion. “When it causes so much…” he trails off.

“I do it because I believe in hope sharing. I write it out to understand myself, but I share it to be understood. I do it because I’ve been transformed when I found myself, found my story in others’ writing. I do it because if I can be infused with hope like a doggone drug being injected needle to vein from just the reading of real life why wouldn’t I also want to drug other people similarly? Besides Babe”, I say, “this is my heritage. How have Africans to slaves to African-Americans passed down our beautiful, brilliant culture? Stories. Through the straight-up generosity of saying, ‘yo, here’s how it all went down.’ I’m a part of that, babe,” I tell him. “I have to. I just have to.”

So started the conversation my husband & I had last week after I lamented the extreme anxiety coursing steadily through my veins after writing a ridiculously vulnerable post about having sex demons.

I wrote that post for a multi-writer site. One of the writers with a manuscript deadline took to begging for a date switch. About 3 days out I offered knowing the ideas for a post about my broken sexuality were swirling in my head. I put the ideas into Evernote, edited them & got the post into draft mode in 3 hours. I’m not sure if that sounds like a long time to you, but for me, it’s lighting fast for a post of that length never mind the weight of the story. The next night I began searching for post images. It took an hour digging through old hard drives for pictures from the early 2000’s. Once I put the images into the post, it was as if I saw the post for the first time: holy-fracking-redonkulessness-this-post-is-off-the-charts-personal. This, of course, 1 hr. before it went live. No turning back.

And then like any other night I went to bed. Unlike any other night, I couldn’t sleep. Like any other morning I woke up, ushered my babies off to school & pre-school, threw on that business casual look & traipsed off to work. Unlike any other day at work, I felt extreme anxiety, shaky fingers, gutted stomach. Tortured as I was, by each new person I came across I wondered “are we Facebook friends? Did you see the link? Do you follow me on Twitter? Did you see my {NEW POST} notification? Did you read it? Do you now know one of my most intimate stories?”

And then rinse-repeat for a full 5 days I’ve not slept well. For five days, I’ve not been in a state one could describe as peaceful in any sense of the word. But there is no regret. There is always cost to doing what you feel is right but there are no regrets when your vision exceeds your fears.